Kwame Mbalia is a husband, father, writer, a New York Times bestselling author, and a former pharmaceutical metrologist in that order. His debut middle-grade novel, Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky was awarded a Coretta Scott King Author Honor, and it—along with the sequels Tristan Strong Destroys the World and Tristan Strong Keeps Punching—is published by Rick Riordan Presents/Disney-Hyperion. He is the co-author of Last Gate of the Emperor with Prince Joel Makonnen, from Scholastic Books, and the editor of the #1 New York Times bestselling anthology Black Boy Joy, published by Delacourte Press. A Howard University graduate and a Midwesterner now in North Carolina, he survives on dad jokes and Cheez-Its.